Ministrado por

Bertrand Badie

Marie-Françoise Durand

Transcrição

The main question now is to assess how globalization is excluding. Of course, we observe in our present world a very strong process of exclusion, but what does it mean? How can we consider this exclusion process? There are two competing visions. The old and traditional vision of exclusion, which is partly adapted to this new global order, and a new vision of exclusion, which is much more connected to the essence of this new process, of this new global order. Traditional vision, for a very simple reason, is that there is a real resilience of the state, and we can find in our present global order the traditional strategy of the state and a traditional hegemonic strategy. Of course, as I mentioned, power is no more really powerful. But power in our traditional order was resulting in an hegemony, which is not really over and many actors among the powers and especially the superpowers consider that this hegemony can be now used and practiced in this new global order. You know, you have heard of this very famous theory of the traditional “stable hegemony”, this hegemonic stability, which was coined first by Kindleberger and after by Robert Gilpin. You know that in this traditional vision a “benign leader” is considered as necessary for stabilizing the entire international order. And many people, observers and actors consider that this is especially true for a global order. If the order is global, we need a “benign leader” for stabilizing and for ordering, for ruling this global order, for acting in a special manner, for keeping the global integration of the international arena. But the real question would be: Is it possible now? Is it possible for the hegemon to keep, to stay as such, to keep its strategy and to maintain this stable hegemony. Hard power was currently defeated, hard power didn’t work when globalization was partly achieved. In the time of Vietnam war, and after in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Somalia hard power didn’t work. And now, no one is able to win a war. It’s the evidence that hard power is less and less working, because of globalization, because of this interdependence on which I put the finger in my previous lecture. That’s why many analysts consider that, instead of this “hard power” which is less and less powerful, we have to move now to a “soft power”. And a new school took place around the Canadian social scientist Robert Cox, but also the British social scientist Susan Strange for considering “soft power” and this vision was also promoted in the United States by Joseph Nye. Cultural hegemony, which is a kind of Gramscian hegemony. That’s to say the hegemony as it was conceived by the famous Italian philosopher Gramsci. This new cultural hegemony is supposed to play the role of the previous hard power hegemony. And that’s true that a cultural hegemony plays a very important role. Let’s consider for instance the films in the world. You know that US is producing about 6% of films in the world, but the US films projection time is 50%. It’s the clear evidence that we are in a world in which there is a real cultural hegemony, and this is true that this cultural hegemony is supported by globalization, as of course a global world is much more adapted for importing films coming from the hegemon. But the real question is: is it sufficient? That’s to say, is a cultural hegemony able to result on a political hegemony? And this is less obvious a cultural hegemony can be confirm, can be strengthened without triggering a political hegemony. The projection of American films, or drinking Coca Cola, or wearing blue jeans don’t really result in adopting the American vision of foreign policy. So, let’s move to what I called the new problematic of hegemony in a global world. There is a strong inequality in the globalization process, but it’s very hard to identify. First of all, I would say that initial inequality is coming from an unequal distribution of resources. That’s to say energy, but also food resources are not equally located in the world, and the lack of energy, for instance in the eastern part of Asia, is playing a very important role for promoting, for triggering tensions, conflicts, and also new kinds of inter-state relations. Inequality of resources is a geographical inequality and this geographical inequality, in a world of interdependence, results in permanent tensions which are explaining the real dangers and risks which are run by the most powerful countries. There is also a strong inequality of income, if you take into account for instance the gross national product you will observe a real gap, a real discrepancy. How can we compare US with 15 000 billion of dollars with Liberia with only one billion dollar of GNP? This discrepancy is so important that equality among states is questioned and we can observe in a world of interdependence how this inequality is creating another aspect of the world tensions that I mentioned. Inequality in trade also. That’s to say, if for instance, Europe is covering 18% of the global trade, if US is covering 15% and Asia 18%, Africa is covering less than 2% of the global trade. This is another very strong inequality which explains how it will be difficult to create, to promote this integrated world which is necessary in a context of globalization. So, economics plays a very important role in this structural inequality. But, there is also a political aspect of this inequality, if we take into account for instance the numerous clubs which take place in the international arena by which the powerful states confiscate, capture the main functions of political governance of the international order. P5, that’s to say the veto group in the Security Council of UN, G8, which is now a G7 which is including a very few members which can be considers as a world oligarchy and deciding on the main economic issues, but also IMF. All the international organizations are structured, shaped according to unequal principles, which is contradicting the UN Charter repeating, clamming that equal sovereignty of all the states around the world. Cultural inequality is something very important. When I mentioned the cultural hegemony I pointed all these cultures which are no more able to exist by themselves and which have to be submitted to a kind of domination of one of the cultures, which is coming from outside and even not really understood by those who use it. And now, I will mention social exclusion. If you take into account the map of human development index you will see this real gap between those developed countries, which are really performant at the level of education, level of health and which are far away from the level which is reached by the lowest rank of developing countries. There is such a social discrepancy among the states that we are now facing a world, which could be compared to European nations at the 19th century between a working class which was quite excluded from the richness of the nation and the <i>bourgeoisie</i>. The world is now led, is now run by this Western <i>bourgeoisie</i>, by these Western states which are playing the role, which was previously played by bourgeoisie inside the nation-state. And as we said at this time the working class is moving to a status of a dangerous class and this is probably the main characteristic of the poorest states. If you compare the map of human development index and the map of conflicts you will understand that there is a real connection between the two phenomena.